Dismal Haiku

what the water knows

the water will never tell

You'd have to be there

a teeny ode for my sister, the Dismal

constantly in my blood, for we breathe with the same breath

We respire each other.

A paternal link, peat moss in my very DNA, water filtered through her cells sustains my own.

it is the closest, but it is not the end... She and me the two of us we... are part of the whole.

Gaian Collective

Treat us well as you should yourself.

Wherever you are.



A Selection of Scribbles

Propaganda

Poisonous American Discourse.
Propaganda, of course.
Run amok through brains of muck - mired in the bog of McSulci and WalMartapoptosis.
Black orchid of the hot-house variety
Bred intentionally
Forced into existence
Against the natural way of the world

Seeking

Education is not the act of being taught, it's the act of using the tools given to you by the learned to actively seek the truth for yourself.
Take what is told to you lightly, and run to the nearest forest of knowledge and blaze a path to the truth for yourself.
You will never forget the way, then... For you are the trailblazer of knowledge within your mind
 

Free Bird

Hark! The breathless feeling
of change.
A leap of faith
causing me to contort
in midair with
the suppleness of a cat
-- Natural Acrobat --
landing -- surefooted
no matter the takeoff
position, propulsion, or
situation
-- Even Steven --
I live to stay in
this flow no matter its
direction, intention, or
evolution
I make it change
course because I
have that power. I am
free... I can do what I want

The Red Barn

Most people can look back over the years and identify a time and place at which their lives changed significantly. Whether by accident or design, these are the moments when, because of a readiness within us and a collaboration with events occurring around us, we are forced to seriously reappraise ourselves and the conditions under which we live and to make certain choices that will affect the rest of our lives.


- Frederick F. Flack

It's time to plant those trees I've been talking about for the last 25 years.

Roots.

Physical work to keep my 40 year old body strong, enough land to hunt, fish and farm organic, natural food. More time and space to be creative by having a helpmate and friend, without whom this project would be impossible.

It still may be impossible, as we have only just made an offer. It may not work out at this location.
...but I have a feeling...

Time Haiku

Breaths pass, moments tick

In Time's abyss...forever

Why do I waste them?




it will happen

 



Keyhole Haiku

I leave the key out

it leaves free spirits and breeze

ways to come and go

Her

She is waiting..somewhat impatiently.
She's been around for a while. She lives in a novel I've been slowly tapping away at.

Many overlooked her as a mere woman until she allowed a portrait to be painted.
In the portrait, she displayed her prize.

Her Prize

Detail of a painting I have been working on... For three years. I never finished it.

It's a gentle reminder that Madam is knocking on my door lately.
Darla... she says... have you forgotten? You promised to spill all the gory details. Now get to it.

Cypress Tree

beneath still waters

entwined roots and fish mingle

only seems lonely

Spider's Web Haiku

Rain Soaked Spider's Web

Glistening Globules Growing

Along Silken Strands

What was the worst advice you've ever received?

To "forego art and writing and get a real job, you can do the others in your spare time."
What a crock! I only wasted years working for someone else's benefit, and ignoring my passions.

Ask me anything

Possibilities -Pink Hibiscus

they are endless. Truly.

I have a body of work I have been collecting for years, I've played with web pages and sites and customized to my heart's content, and now it's coming together.

Seriously coming together...
like actually using digital techniques to play with the images more than I ever did. I would only crop or contrast or saturate. Now I'm playing with filters and smudges and stuff I never ventured to before. Designing cards and clothes around the images opens a whole new world, I never glimpsed for myself.

I don't know why I never did. There is a first time for everything, right?

So here's a hibiscus I played with. I am happy with the effect.
Different, changed, but still all mine.

I'm even keeping up this blog a bit more.

Who knows what will happen.

Coyote

Began last night, and finished this morning.

We went to the pow wow yesterday, and I finally got the burr in my paw to get that coyote out...it  has been howling inside of me for a few weeks now.

This is my very first finished oil pastel picture. I'm happy and now I need to get the turtles out. They have been much more patient. Like, years in the making.

Coyote

14' x 17'

oil pastel on heavy paper

And it can already be bought http://www.zazzle.com/coyote_poster-228803626482858529

How cool is that?!

Royalties

I have shut out.
For now... quit my steady job to take on students from the local community colleges, again.  It's okay, I love it. However, it is frightening to jump off when you have children to raise on your own.

I have to work extra hard, now. 

The students will trickle in.

My income will be constrained.

I discovered Zazzle. Well... I didn't discover it, but I was made aware. I was so excited, I forget now why I was there to begin with, or how I got there.

I have been painting and taking photographs for years with no feasible (make that free-sible) outlet to attract customers. Or at least without the knowledge of such places... for me, that is. You know... a nobody artist in a sea of nobody artists.  Mine eyes hath been opened.

Anyway, I have just plain stopped the presses of my doing for others, for the time being.

I'm working on my own repetoire.

Who knows... if everyone has been telling me the truth, and I DO have a good eye, a keen brush, and a sharp wit, I should be able to make a brilliant go at it.

I would link to the store, but as of now, the system has the storefronts whacked out, but the designs are out there.

Until then... I'm designing.

Mobile mantid

Checking my mobile settings with an 8x10 mantid work in progress.

It's eyes are a bit alien, I think, I'm not sure where that came from.  This is one part of a larger work with three canvases. It will show a food chain stalking in progress on three levels of canvas depth.

The entire work is based on my own observations. I watched a dragonfly stalk, catch and eat a fly... just a few hours later, I was watching a mantid on my front walk, suddenly, it reached out and grabbed a dragonfly clean out of the air, and gobbled it right down. It was a vicious and delicious fight.

The mantid held the dragonfly and ate it head-first, munching all the way down until it was holding nothing but wings. Wild.

My Sketching Palette

I've never kept a solid journal for longer than maybe four days.

But, now I hear that a way to stave off artist's block and procrastination is to keep an art journal. I looked over several examples, and decided to just dedicate what I have here to that end.

How about starting off with my favorite sketching palette, this is what I start every painting with, then add color as needed.

Burnt Sienna is what I sketch with and use to make black by mixing with the phtalo blue. I then make a greyscale with the white.

I like to sketch with a #4 or #5 round brush. The Burnt Sienna lends an earthy and real base for the shadows, and make a great jumping off place for the color when it comes.

Sketching with paint? Oh, yes. With oil paint, it is possible. It can be moved around in a way that pencils can't be moved, it can be erased...restarted...erased...restarted over and over again.

My first videos from the studio are coming soon. If you have EVER wanted to paint, but never tried, I want for you to try now. I don't care the plethora of reasons you can come up with to discourage your talent of self, just try it. I want to show you how.

Art is not pretentious, people make it so. Everyone is a natural artist, all that is needed is the basic set, an example to start with, and off you go.

It's the little things, like knowing you CAN erase an oil painting. Didn't you listen to what Bob Ross had to say?

'There are no mistakes in painting, only happy accidents'

Wood and Grimm

I had a flash of inspiration while I was looking at some of my older paintings. What is MY art journal for if not for recording MY quick thoughts before they slip away. From what I've seen, many people have art journals that are glorious examples of extended scrapbooking.

I hate scrapbooking. (in the new crafty sense, I used to have a scrapbook in the literal sense.)

I read the term 'art journal' when I set out to wrangle my societally induced adult ADD lifestyle and grab my potential by the horns to steer myself where I want to go. To get over my procrastinatory ways, I read I should keep a daily art journal.

I was thinking 'diary with drawings and clippings' then I searched 'art-journal' and I was instantly put off by the idea as it was presented. I kept reading it was supposed to be whatever I wanted, in whatever format.

I wanted online and digital, but I don't think my screen will take but so much paste.

So no pages of collage and decorative wordings. Mine is a diary, and some pictures. I need bones in my diet, and not so much meat. Meat I have... something to hold it up is called for now.

Inspiration flash... I make nice gnarly, woody, and dark. I love to catch expressions... In my mind I saw the expression of a Grimm style heroine peeking from behind a Black Forest tree, her wide eyes, her fingers pressing into the rough bark, the rough bark grabbing at her garb. What she sees is just barely reflected in her liquid and detailed eyes. Most viewers should not notice this until really looking at the painting's nooks and crannies.

This is what I saw when looking at one tiny detail of a completely unrelated painting.

This is what I mean by an art journal.

Ballard Peaches 16x20 oil on stretched canvas.

The peaches were picked off of the tree in my yard. A leftover from when the farm was a peach orchard and fruit stand.

Cojones

Just spit it out Sarah. Are you woman enough to take the balls out of your mouth?

No, I don't think so.

Is it somehow okay for this horrid wreck of a reality show whore to say out loud that the elected President doesn't have the Cojones for fill-in-the-blank.

Is it somehow okay because it is a foreign word... does it make it politically correct?

Go ahead, Sarah. Say it in English. Since it is the preferred language (nay, OFFICIAL language) of your darling posse party of tea leaf readers, go ahead...

Look him in the face and tell him HE doesn't have THE BALLS.

I dare you. Who has the biggest balls of them all?

Is It Odd?

How is it that I don't believe in ghosts, yet I think my house is haunted?
How is it that I am doing things my way, yet I check if what I'm doing is okay with the inhabitants?
How is it that when I know I'm alone, I talk to the people in the house?

It's not Popeye... he's out here in the furnace house. This was where he spent most of his time... here and out on the farm, around the pond.

....Then there is the old "house in the yard" where long ago, enslaved people lived, loved and feared, and hoped, laughed and cried, worked and died. I often stand at the upstairs hall window at night and just listen... Imagine the little dark faces peering from their upstairs window at my house, and wonder what they thought.

 I love this place, I do. Over 200 years of sheltering life in this place in space.

It's not forever, of course, this I know. One day, probably sooner than later, Quarter Moon House will be gone. I don't know if mine will be the last tribe of humans to live here, but if I am...

I'm determined to absorb every bit of energy left here,

in the paint and dust and behind walls,

Recording my time as I add to it all, like a new spice in the stew.

If I'm not the last, of course I will leave it with more whispers and scents of my life.

How awesome is that?

Freedom of Speech

It's wonderful that it works both ways, isn't it?
I certainly think so.

Tracy Morgan - Uncle Jemima

Tracy Morgan is one funny man.

I was watching SNL best Commercial Parodies last night, and saw this spoof which I had never seen before. It is now my favorite:

Blackbeard Pirate Festival - Hampton VA - Day 2

By far, the Blackbeard Festival is our favorite of the annual fests around Hampton Roads. It is the only one that can get me out for at least 2 of the three days.

The scene is free, literally. No admission tickets needed, and plenty of free parking right smack dab in the middle of it all.

Loads of fest-y food and drink, and best of all, places to sit, eat, drink and be merry.

This is very attractive to my tribe. Who likes to stand and juggle a gyro and a beer? Not us.

Hampton Police force also does a fine job of being lenient, and inconspicuous. Translate that as being a very low-hassle event.

This year I went out adult-style on Friday, then took the younger of my boys on Saturday. 

The brat turned on his old mam and tried to capture her at the point of his blunderbuss... earning the ire of her dastardly dark side, conjured up and evident in her meanest pirate face.

"GGRrrrr YAR! I'll butter me homebaked bread with the marrow from yer bones, ye turncoat."

Teeth: Tools yer mama told you not to use and then uses herself to chew through the restraints, or tie on a motherly leather wristlet.

 Pirates take pictures, too.

Last year I took these shots of a van that I fell in love with, because I figured, 'that's dedication'.

Yes.. that is a ships wheel affixed to the steering wheel.

 This year I find out it belongs to The Brigands who had entertained us greatly last night, and again today (in a more intimate setting 'unplugged' style)

So... I bought a CD for a tenner from a beautiful lass, I believe was named Baby-Punch McGee which helped them gas up their brilliant land yacht to head off on more piratey adventures.

Meanwhile... at Pirate's Cove...

it was dinnertime...

The best was watching the kids swordfighting and then dancing in the round in front of the Bunch of Grapes Tavern at Pirates Cove.


Wild little heathens... it was great.

The dancing was the best, and I will tell you why...

The young lady is trying to get the kids to dance in a circle, but they won't get it together when the music starts.

It quickly progresses to a free-for-all of movement and screamy fun. I love looking at the different body gyrations they are so joyously going through.

Even the pirates had to get into it...

And yea, oh yea they lit up the bridge 'waterfall' of sparks

Yo Ho Ho.. Until next year mateys!